It’s not nourishing any more, thanks to Big Ag, which is a model of efficiency, but not of nutritive values!
This is the message I’ve been writing for my followers for over 30 years. Now, at last, the science is all packaged in one very telling article, published in the journal Lancet Global Health. In a nutshell, it found that nutritional deficiencies are the norm, not the exception. Our modern “balanced” diets are definitely NOT keeping everyone properly nourished, whatever the dieticians, nutritionist and other ‘experts’ are saying.
The study, conducted by researchers at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), used data from 31 countries to model global nutrient requirements and then applied these models to a dataset from 185 countries, estimating nutrient deficiencies for 99.3% of the world’s population. Fifteen essential nutrients, including calcium, B vitamins and vitamin C, were evaluated across different age and gender groups.
“More than 5 billion people do not consume enough iodine (68% of the global population), vitamin E (67%) and calcium (66%). More than 4 billion people do not consume enough iron (65%), riboflavin (55%), folate (54%) and vitamin C (53%).
Within the same country and age groups, estimated inadequate intakes were higher for women than for men for iodine, vitamin B12, iron and selenium and higher for men than for women for magnesium, vitamin B6, zinc, vitamin C, vitamin A, thiamin and niacin.”
These results underscore the widespread nature of micronutrient deficiencies globally.¹
“We hope this analysis … improves understanding of global micronutrient inadequacy so that public health interventions can more effectively address deficiencies,” the researchers concluded.
The most common nutrient deficiencies include vitamins D, B1, B2, B3 and B12, A, C, E, and minerals calcium, magnesium and iodine.
The concept of a “balanced diet” has become meaningless pap.
So next time you read some idiot spouting that all supplements do it give you expensive pee, note that person is a liar or a fool, or both. At best it is a remark over half a century out of date. Foods, even whole foods, no longer contain enough nutrients because the soil is exhausted of nutrients. Modern intensive farming methods simply do not look after the soil; they deplete it.
And THAT Is The New Story
It’s not just about poverty and inadequate nutrition. We have moved beyond mere eating habits and food. Our whole nutrition is now in the hands of commercialized agribusiness (Big Ag). They are taking over more and more of earth’s land and plundering it for profit, giving nothing back and making no provisions for the future.
It’s part of what I feel most scornful about numerous (not all) “successful” and “rich” people: they are stealing our children’s wealth, the grandchildren’s wealth and probably by now, the great-grandchildren’s wealth. There will be nothing left for them to live on at this rate.
Coming back to what that means for us, our food is no longer nutritious.
In 1997, Anne-Marie Mayer, a nutrition consultant in the UK, looked at the composition of the UK government’s food tables. She compared the mineral content of 20 fruits and 20 vegetables reported in the 1930s to those in the 1980s and found that the 1980s batch had lower levels of magnesium, copper and other micronutrients.
In 2004, Donald Davis and fellow scientists at the University of Texas carried out an investigation: 43 foods that were tested, mostly vegetables, showed a marked decrease in nutrients between the mid and late 20th century.
For example, the calcium in green beans dropped from 65 to 37mg. That’s almost halved. Vitamin A levels plummeted by almost half in asparagus. Broccoli stalks had less iron.
Of course the industry shills continue to add denials and confusion, to blur the lines. But modern supermarket foods—available in vast quantities all year round—are simply not nutritious. Oranges and other fruits may contain zero vitamin C. The reason is they have been on the shelves for weeks, kept viable by irradiation so the consumer is hoodwinked into thinking these are fresh crops.
The potential causes behind the decline in the nutritional quality of foods have been identified worldwide as chaotic mineral nutrient application, the preference for less nutritious cultivars/crops (choosing instead high-yielding varieties), and agronomic issues associated with a shift from natural farming to chemical farming.²
Since the 1940s, crop yield and the per-capita availability of foods have been continuously increasing due to intensive farming techniques, artificial fertilization, pesticides, irrigation, growing high-yielding varieties, and other environmental means, whereas malnutrition tends to increase incessantly due to disrupting the fine balance of soil life and decreasing the nutritional density and quality of the food crops.
Globally today, more than two billion people are suffering from micronutrient insufficiency, especially iodine, iron, folate, vitamin A, and zinc [1,2,3]. It is the main cause of premature deaths, morbidity, and retardation in the physical and mental growth of children [4]; in 2017, 11 million deaths and 255 million daily-adjusted life years (DALYs) could be attributed to malnutrition.³
In other words we are becoming overfed but undernourished, due to modern harvesting methods, which are deplorable.
Since ancient times, nutrient-intense crops such as millets, conventional fruits, and vegetables have been broadly grown and are the most important staple food, but the area dedicated to these crops has been declining rapidly over the past few decades due to their poorer economic competitiveness with major commodities such as high-yielding varieties of potato, tomato, maize, wheat, and rice.
In other words farmers have gone with profits and screw the consumer.
The Soil Is More Precious Than Gold
We can’t eat gold. But our soil keeps us alive. In my days as a country youngster (my people never owned a farm, were just laborers or “farm hands”), the ruling drive was to improve the soil. There is nothing more powerful and biologically positive you could do for your community than to leave the soil in a better state than when you started.
Only small-scale farmers now care about that. Yet they are a dying breed, being gobbled up by Big Ag and the likes of Bill Gates (now the largest farming landowner in the USA).
What’s sometimes overlooked also is that soils help manage water. They are a water containment system. If the inherent structures in the soil are distorted or destroyed, water retention is compromised.
Soil contains an uncountable multitude of inconspicuous microorganisms and soil animals that modern agribusiness destroys. These organisms include bacteria, algae, fungi, various worms, springtails, woodlice and many others. Soil organisms are responsible for the regeneration of the soil. Bacteria, fungi and earthworms create fertile soil and make nutrients available for plant growth.
Soil organisms respond to human activities through changes in their diversity and are therefore considered excellent early warning systems for disturbances. Soil is threatened in several ways. The biggest risk factors for soil are physical changes such as erosion, humus loss and compaction, and chemical changes due to external inputs of pollutants and pesticides.
We worry about pesticides hurting humans. I think maybe we should worry even more about the deleterious effect on organisms in our soil. Without them, the ecosystem will collapse and there are already these serious warning signs that soil can no longer do what it is supposed to do—nourish all creatures in the ecosystem.
Sorry to be a party pooper, but remember all this when you are munching your way through the Christmas feast! How MUCH you eat does little for your nourishment, if the food is already depleted in nutrients.
To Your Good Health,
Prof. Keith Scott-Mumby
The Official Alternative Doctor
References:
- Lancet Glob Health. 2024 Aug 29:S2214-109X(24)00276-6
- https://www.mdpi.com/2304-8158/13/6/877
- Murray, C.J.L. Health effects of dietary risks in 195 countries, 1990–2017: A systematic analysis for the global burden of disease study 2017. Lancet 2019, 383, 1958–1972
